Social gifting startup Giftology co-founded by former Rocket Internet executive looking for buyers

Social gifting venture Giftology, owned and operated by Delhi-based startup Sama Web Innovations Pvt Ltd, is in talks with another company for a possible sell-out, a source privy to the development told Techcircle.in.

The online venture is currently inactive with its website unavailable and its Facebook app withdrawn completely. According to a report in NextBigWhat, the website has been down for a week and the venture may be shutting down.

However, the source said the startup has not really shut down, and the talks with the prospective buyer are still going on. "As of now, it's not clear if Giftology is selling its entire stake and if the prospective buyer is operating in the same domain," the source said.

When contacted, Giftology co-founder Aman Narang declined to comment.

Founded in 2012 by Narang and Nikhil Sama, Giftology has developed a Facebook application that allows users to send gift vouchers to their friends. Early this year, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Kiran Sidhu, chairman of the European prepaid cards provider Transact Network, and appointed Jabong's entrepreneur-in-residence Varun Vummidi as its CEO.

At that time, Narang had told Techcirce.in that Giftology had around 5,000 registered users and more than 40 brands (for online and offline products) were using its app.

Narang is an alumnus of University of Sheffield and previously worked with Freecharge.com, Paytronic Network Pvt Ltd and P&A Receivables.

An alumnus of the University of Chicago, Sama was earlier a director at global tech incubator cum investor Rocket Internet GmbH. He is also running another startup called SnapLion that provides an online platform to create interactive mobile apps for anyone wanting to engage their fan base in real time. In July this year, SnapLion raised and undisclosed amount in funding from India Internet Group, Blume Ventures and Rehan Yar Khan-led Orios Venture Partners.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)